


Strange Mercy

by Alvitr



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Canon Divergence, Gen, Mortal!Loki, Psychological Trauma, amnesiac!Loki, fem!Loki
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-02
Updated: 2013-12-02
Packaged: 2018-01-03 06:23:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1067120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alvitr/pseuds/Alvitr
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Loki is cast to Midgard, stripped of powers and memory. The Avengers look for clues to track her down, but sleuthing isn't really their strength...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Strange Mercy

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fanfic in this universe, my first fanfic in about 2 years, and the first time I've used AO3. So please forgive any errors on my part, and I welcome any criticism.

The sky was a dome. It was as though a glass cage, or a downturned bowl, had descended. You might reach up and touch the nothingness. Stars twinkled like winking eyes. Beyond them were more still. You could float up past them and keep going, and going, until you weren’t floating anymore, but falling, at such great speed that it seemed like no speed at all.

But you weren’t falling, or floating. You were rooted to the ground, fingers clenching in the dirt like old gnarled tree roots. That recalled something. But it fluttered away like breath in cold air (caverns of ice, chasms so dark they were blacker than black, an inky purple you could disappear into forever…) and you were back, spinning, clutching to a tiny rock that was endlessly revolving, and it was all you could do to hold onto it and not be flung off - again -

She woke.

*

These were the facts, as Tony Stark understood them.

He had been woken at a truly unreasonable time (five a.m.! On a Saturday! Not that he kept to a regular working week but the principle of the thing remained), summoned to an important meeting of the Avengers and SHIELD, and no one had even thought to make them coffee. Nary a donut to be seen.

“I swear to God, I’ll take a fucking granola bar. Anything. I’m leaving you guys a bad review on Yelp!”

“Are you finished?” Fury said. “Or should we reconvene at the Hilton, so you can get a continental breakfast?”

“That sounds great,” Tony said, standing up to go. 

“Sit down.” Fury closed his eye, and Tony wonder idly if behind his patch, his ruined eye is attempting to mimic the working one. “Thor has important information to brief us on.”

“What is this about?” Natasha asked. She looked, Tony noted, disgustingly wide awake and alert. 

“My brother,” Thor said. He looked uncharacteristically somber.

“Oh _balls_ ,” Tony muttered. “Here we fucking go.”

“Where is he?” Clint asked. “Is he on Earth? How did he escape?”

Thor held up one hand. “Be calm, friends. Loki is in this realm. He has not, however, escaped.”

“I’m having difficulty comprehending this,” Bruce said.

“Yeah,” Steve added. “I thought you were taking him back to Asgard to serve out his punishment - why is he here, then?”

“My father’s choice of sentence was … unconventional,” Thor explained. “When I incurred my father’s wrath not long ago, he sent me to Midgard, stripped of my powers, mortal and vulnerable, to learn a lesson. Likewise, he felt that Loki also needed to learn a lesson.”

“Seriously?” Natasha said. “Is that what you’re telling us? Loki is wandering around this planet, mortal? This is insane.”

“There is more,” Thor continued hastily. “My father was not insensitive to the fact that Loki caused great destruction here - that, even stripped of his strength, he could pose a danger to this world. There are two further aspects of his sentence.” He held up one finger. “Firstly, Loki’s memories have been suppressed. As I understand it, he will regain these gradually, when he is ready.”

“No magic,” Steve mused. “No immortality. No memories.”

“Frankly, that still sounds like a recipe for disaster to me,” Bruce interrupted. “I mean, he’s basically an amnesiac flung to earth, from the way this sounds. That’s a little…”

“Fucked up?” Tony supplied. He had grown quiet as Thor’s story had progressed. “The world’s not kind to people with no identity.”

“Isn’t that the point?” Clint said. “This is a punishment, not a vacation.” _Still pretty pissed_ , Tony thought, _though who can blame the guy?_

“It’s not just that though,” Bruce countered. “Think about it - Loki’s a pretty well known criminal here. He might attract some unwarranted attention.”

“Exactly,” Steve said urgently. “It’s not really, fair - whatever he’s done - he has no idea what he did now. I don’t like the idea of him getting attacked with no idea why.”

“You said there were two additional parts of Loki’s sentence, Thor,” Natasha said quietly. “What’s the second part?”

“Never fear, friends,” Thor said. “Odin did think of these potential outcomes. That is why, before his magic and memories were removed, my brother was required to use his powers one last time.”

“He disguised himself?” Tony guessed.

“If his power is gone, how could an illusion stay working?” Natasha wondered.

Thor sighed. “It is hard to explain,” he said. “Especially for me. I have little understanding of these things. But my brother has always been able to change his form. It part of his essential nature. He has been able to do it, with no effort at all, from birth.”

“So,” Tony said, “Let’s recap. Amnesiac, mortal, disguised Loki, somewhere on this planet, searching for the meaning of life, or something like that. Are we supposed to do something?”

“I still don’t feel good about this,” Steve muttered.

“You are a good man, Steven,” Thor said. “I also have many qualms about this situation.”

Tony raised an eyebrow. “I thought your dad was this super wise, all-seeing, all-knowing god. I’m surprised you’re questioning him.”

“I understand what my father wishes to do,” Thor said. “But despite my brother’s trespasses, despite all the ugliness between us, I worry for him. I was very lucky, when I myself came to Midgard; but that does not mean Loki will also have such luck.”

Fury had been silent for much of this conversation. Tony had assumed this was all not news to him; Thor would have already informed him of much of this. Now, however, he cleared his throat. “There is another part of this whole scenario which I find problematic. If Loki is out there, potentially in a dangerous situation, slowly regaining memories, it could make him … unpredictable. Unstable.”

“There’s just too many variables in this whole thing,” Bruce said. “Anything could happen. He could be hurt, he could hurt others…”

“So you want us to track him down.” Tony tapped a finger on his chin, thoughtfully.

“And do what exactly?” Clint said. “This isn’t really our job.”

“I will take responsibility for him,” Thor said. “Please. I must find him.”

Tony sighed. He could certainly see Thor’s point. “All right, if we’re going to do this, we’re going to need more information. Where did he land? When did he get here? And what about this disguise?”

“I cannot answer the first question, I am afraid.” Thor bowed his head. “As for the second … he was cast down to Midgard more than three months ago.”

“Three months?” Natasha gasped. “Why are you only telling us about this now?”

“I apologize,” Thor said. “The truth is, I did not know until now. My father kept the nature of Loki’s punishment from me at first. Perhaps because he foresaw that I would do just this thing.”

“Great,” Bruce said, rubbing his eyes. “This is going to be difficult.”

“What about the disguise?” Tony asked. “If you weren’t there when this whole sentencing thing happened, I take it you don’t know what form Loki took?”

“Ah,” Thor said, brightening a little. “I can in fact help in this regard. When I questioned my father, he told me Loki took a form familiar to me -- the simplest one he could, one he has used many times in my presence, when we were younger and adventured together frequently.”

“Oh?” Tony couldn’t help but be a bit amused. Thor looked so nostalgic. Really, it was hard to imagine the homicidal supervillain the Avengers knew and didn’t love, running around Lancelotting it up with the god of Thunder, but hey, anything was possible. “So what’s this form like?”

“Loki,” Thor answered, “took the form of a woman.”

*

“So from what Thor described,” Tony murmured, his fingers sliding over the interfaces with practised ease, “Loki’s babe persona looks pretty much like him, just … “

“Feminine,” Bruce cut in, before Tony could say something inappropriate. The two of them had decided to start the search off by searching police and hospital reports.

“Black hair,” Tony counted off, “Blue eyes or green, kinda hard to tell - I’ve always been shit at that stuff -”

“A little shorter, I should imagine,” Bruce said, “But still probably taller than an average woman. Between 5’7” and 5’10” maybe?”

“This is going to take forever, isn’t it?” Tony said.

“Very likely.”

* 

It took approximately two and a half weeks, to be precise.

“This might have promise,” Bruce said one day. Tony had been nodding off, but now he snapped awake, and craned his neck over to Bruce’s workstation. It had been a long eighteen days, filled with false leads and dead ends. “This woman was found in a town near Abderdeen, Scotland, about a week after Loki’s ETA. She looked like she’d been living rough for a bit, and claimed to have no idea who she was.”

“Any photos?” Tony asked. 

Bruce scrolled through the system. “Yes,” he said, and opened the files. They both gasped at the same time.

“Call Fury,” Tony said. “I think we’re going to Scotland.” He rolled around to face the computer interface squarely, shaking his head in disbelief. “I can’t believe we actually found you,” he muttered, to the image before him: the very likeness of Loki, God of Extreme Annoyance; only ever so slightly softened by the change of gender, but changed much more by the expression of utter confusion and fear across her face.

* 

Tony, Bruce, and Natasha volunteered to go on the retrieval mission. Thor had begged to be taken along, but when dealing with authorities, Tony had reasoned, it was perhaps best to leave the hammer wielding Viking at home. No, it was best to keep this as simple and functional as possible. Bruce would go in case there were any medical needs. Natasha was on the list in case of any “woman stuff” as Tony indelicately put it, a comment she scowled at. Tony went because, as he described it, he was funding the whole fucking thing anyway.

According to the report they had accessed, Loki had been psychologically evaluated at Royal Cornhill Hospital, and, when determined not to be a danger to herself, was given over to the Social Work department and entered in a resettlement program.

“It means,” Bruce had explained to Thor before they left, “They’ll have found her a job, something simple she could do despite her memory problems, and a place to live, maybe in a dormitory, or if she did really well, a more independent situation.”

“If we’re lucky, that’s where she’ll still be when we get there.” Tony added.

“What exactly are we going to say?” Natasha asked.

“That he is my brother, and we must take him home!” Thor responded impatiently.

“Eh-eh-eh,” Tony said, shaking a finger. “First of all, she’s your sister, not your brother. For now anyway. And officially we have to leave you out of this. You’re just as much a problem, legally speaking, as she is.” He placed a hand on Natasha’s shoulder. She frowned, picked it up, and removed it. Tony smiled. “Here’s the official story we’re going with. Loki’s Natasha’s cousin - she was doing a gap year, something like that, whole family hasn’t heard from her in months and are in a terrible state, here we are to bring her home, et cetera. I’m getting papers all sorted out. We’ll have a name for her, a name for Natasha, it will all be handled.” He pressed a hand to his chest. “I’m the family’s lawyer, Bruce here is the family doctor.”

“The least amount of details we can manage the better,” Natasha said. “The more elaborate the ruse, the harder it is to keep it up.”

Thor smiled suddenly. “Loki often said something quite similar.”

*

Of course, nothing went as smoothly as planned. Of course not.

“She’s gone.” This was spoken by a short, stout little old woman, by the name of Mrs. Fitzsimmons. Loki’s landlady, or she had been, until three days before. “I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised, knowing what the council told me about her, but honestly I was.” She smiled and shook her head. “She seemed such a nice girl. Very quiet. They got her a job at the village library.” She pointed, vaguely, in the direction of the town’s center. “Perfect fit. She was always reading. Never saw her without a book the whole two months she was here.”

“Do you have any idea where she might have gone?” Natasha asked.

“No, I don’t dearie,” Mrs. Fitzsimmons. “All I know is what I told the police and the fellows at the hospital that she’d been at. She disappeared in the middle of the night. Barely took anything in her room.” She paused. “But there is one thing,” she finally said. “I showed it to them police, and they didn’t really know what to think about it -- but you should come upstairs and have a look for yourself. Maybe it means something to you.”

Tony, Bruce, and Natasha looked at each other in confusion, but followed Mrs. Fitzsimmons upstairs and requested. She took out a key from her dress pocket and unlocked the third door on the left of the hallway and led them into a room - Loki’s room. 

“Now you see,” Mrs. Fitzsimmons said as they filed into the room behind her, “I ought to be angry, really; it says right in the boarding house agreement, no painting the walls! But I can’t quite find it in me to be upset. There’s something quite lovely about it, don’t you think?”

“Holy shit,” Tony said. They had all frozen once they’d fully entered the room. This was an attic room and opposite the bed there was a sloped ceiling wall. A mural had been painted across it, but it wasn’t anything like Tony had ever seen before. Was it lovely? Lovely and terrible, he thought. Just the sort of thing Loki might paint, he supposed. 

Weird, alien landscapes covered the wall; looping purple ferns, dripping stalactites, blood red seascapes. Figures dotted the world here and there. Bruce approached one, and touched it lightly. A cowering, dark-haired figure, peering out behind bars, a manacle around one ankle, trailing down to nothing.

“Guys,” Bruce muttered. “I think maybe she’s remembering.”

*

They took photos of every inch of the mural, thanked Mrs. Fitzsimmons, said no thank you to tea and jam sandwiches, and hurried back to their hotel in town. 

While Bruce got a video conference set up with the rest of the team, Tony and Natasha uploaded the photos of the mural and spread them out in the right formation. 

“This thing creeps me out,” Natasha muttered, as she stared at one of the images. “I mean, look.” She pointed: here a figure was engulfed in flames, laughing. Or it was being birthed from the petals of a sunset-orange flower. Tony couldn’t tell. He’d never really understood art anyway.

“What about this?” Bruce said. He pulled a different one to the forefront. This Tony felt a little more comfortable interpreting.

“That’s Thor and Loki, totally.” It was so obvious. Here there was a blond youth astride a beautiful stylized horse; clinging to his ankle desperately, as though trying to climb up, or being dragged along, was a dark haired figure. “Holy inferiority complex, Batman.”

“The question is, how much does Loki actually remember?” Bruce said. “Maybe he - I mean she - doesn’t really understand what any of this is about, either.”

“Whatever the case,” Natasha sighed, “something made her leave. And very suddenly.”

“Where the hell could she be?” Tony whispered almost to herself. He frowned. “There has to be a clue here. I’m sure of it.”

*  
 _You knew it was wrong. You always know it is wrong but you do it anyway._

The thoughts buzzed around her mind like flies on a dead carcass. She swatted them away as best she could. She told herself a story. 

This, she had discovered, came easily to her. What a rich irony! Her mind was a mess, filled with walled off passages and sudden drops and broken bridges; she couldn’t remember a thing beyond a few months ago, but she could remember every word she’d read or the melody to every song she’d heard since that time. She settled back into the bus seat and closed her eyes, and searched for one.

“She had not walked so far for years,” she whispered softly. The rest came in a rush, comforting, like a blanket. _Six feathers had she picked from the grass and drawn between her fingers and pressed to her lips to feel their smooth, glinting plumage, when she saw, gleaming on the hill-side, a silver pool, mysterious as the lake into which Sir Bedivere flung the sword of Arthur. A single feather quivered in the air and fell into the middle of it. Then, some strange ecstasy came over her. Some wild notion she had of following the birds to the rim of the world and flinging herself on the spongy turf and there drinking forgetfulness, while the rooks’ hoarse laughter sounded over her._

She opened her eyes again and turned her head to face the window, looking and not looking at the roadside of the A96 rushing past her, her own unfamiliar reflection disrupting, mutating it.

“I shall dream wild dreams,” she murmured. And, _‘I have sought happiness through many ages and not found it; fame and missed it; love and not known it; life — and behold, death is better. I have known many men and many women,’ she continued; ‘none have I understood. It is better that I should lie at peace here with only the sky above me.’_

Yes. That was how it went.

She slept.

**Author's Note:**

> The book which Loki quotes from is Orlando by Virginia Woolf.
> 
> Loki’s murals are inspired somewhat by Hilary Nathan’s, some of which can be viewed [here](http://samtippet.weebly.com/).


End file.
